THE SAND PAINTINGS: Little Girl Found
by vanhunks
Summary: J/C Third story in the series "The Sand Paintings". Chakotay remembers his first meeting with Elizabeth when his reaction to seeing left her stunned and confused. Told from Chakotay's perspective.


**The Sand Paintings**

**"Little Girl Found"**

**by **

**vanhunks**

A series of stories following "Finding Kathryn"

**Rating:** PG-13/K+ Warning: Angst.

**Disclaimer:** Paramount owns Janeway and Chakotay

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** The third story in the series "The Sand Paintings".

**SUMMARY:** The first meeting between Chakotay and Elizabeth when his reaction to seeing left her stunned and confused. Told from Chakotay's perspective.

**THE SAND PAINTINGS: ****LITTLE GIRL FOUND**

It was Friday, the first week of the new academic year at the Academy. I thought Kathryn needed to get to Indiana. The entire week had been spent with inductions of cadets, new faces, new syllabi, new everything. She was tired and these days she had become more and more insulated. It worried me that she could close herself off in that way, shutting me out too. At night she was contrite, her apology stilted. I'd watch her closely after that. In bed I'd wrap her in my arms and we'd lie quietly until she'd tell me what ailed her.

I knew what was on her mind then, as surely as she knew what was on my mind.

Especially birthdays and Christmases.

"She would have been eighteen today…" Kathryn murmured achingly softly last year, the day after my own birthday.

"Kathryn…"

I heard her sigh. It was a snowy morning and she'd sat in melancholy solitude at the window watching the snow fall gracefully to earth. That night in bed, we talked.

"Don't mind me, Chakotay. I'm thinking aloud," she said lightly, her equilibrium restored. Minutes later she was sleeping soundly.

Sometimes, all the hate and all the anger surfaced in me because of what we suffered, especially Kathryn.

Now, waiting for her to return from the Academy, I'm worried again. The whole week since classes started, she had been wound as tight as a coil sometimes and at others, restless and fractious. Though, to know Kathryn Janeway, one could never discern these emotions in her. She thought I wouldn't pick the little vibes of unrest, but more than twenty years together, I know her.

I hadn't asked her what was troubling her. The new academic year was barely a week old.

Elizabeth would have started at the Academy, or university, whatever she chose, had she been with us.

Had she been alive.

Kathryn never spoke a word, but I knew that it was on her mind.

Our Elizabeth. Ripped from her mother's womb, never to be seen again.

I damn forever Nechayev and Gul Gerek, may their souls rot in the darkness of damnation they fashionably refer to as Hades. I still bear the scars of hate. Kathryn, sweet, loving, disciplined Kathryn was always good at insulating her terror and pain so that no one who took care to watch her, could notice anything amiss.

But when these damned milestones came that proud parents boast about to other parents, family, friends, Kathryn's pain surfaced. I was the only one who could see how she suffered.

Me? As long as I hated, I had that to feed me and keep me alive. I never worried about myself. I cared only about Kathryn, that she healed, that she returned to a semblance of the old Kathryn.

The old Kathryn? I don't think anyone who had been with us on Voyager had ever seen the old Kathryn. Not the way I had, not since her Academy days, I'd say. Not since we found out we were to be proud parents of a baby girl.

Funny. I stood here looking out our bedroom window and there had been no growling of anger that rode me like it did in the early days since Elizabeth's disappearance. Or in the years that followed her disappearance

I killed Gul Gerek. Nechayev died all by herself. Pity. She never got to say about Elizabeth. It would have helped us in our search. But even on her deathbed, she screamed "she's dead, you miserable, worthless rebel…"

What was better? Believing your daughter you haven't seen since her birth, was still alive in the universe somewhere even though you turned the damned place inside out? Or, believing like it was drummed into us by Gerek and Nechayev, that our daughter was dead?

Sighing, I turned from the window. I knew that when evening came Kathryn would be all wound up again; she'd lie in my arms, unresponsive until much, much later when she'd turn in my embrace and kiss me, apologising again for her behaviour. Like other times, I would also never tell her how I cursed the Federation and the Cardassians all over again while she slept.

What was the mind's eye that it made one see all the suffering rather than good times? Whenever something triggered my memory, I tried with intense, superhuman effort to drive it away from me.

Who was I kidding? Spirits! There were times I still saw Kathryn lying on the concrete floor of that cell, blood spurting from her body and something - the baby's placenta - lying between her legs.

No baby.

I cursed myself all over again that I arrived too late to save her, to save our baby. It didn't matter that I too had been half beaten to death. The memory of what happened to Kathryn always made me cry out a little from the pain.

Kathryn had been unconscious.

I died ten thousand times trying to answer Kathryn's question, "Where is my baby?"

I still die whenever I see that look in Kathryn's eyes. Lost, scared, confused, too ravaged from her ordeal. The anger set in later. Acceptance that Elizabeth was dead, only years later. Our years in the Delta Quadrant had been a rude intermission to our search... Yet, we had never given up hope. Thinking that she might have been alive somewhere in the universe, against our better judgment at believing her dead, was what kept us going, kept Kathryn indefatigably striving to cut our seven year journey short by light-years.

Lately, we had taken to celebrating our dead daughter's milestones. Birthday gifts, room furnishings, that sort of thing. We were not obsessive, but whenever we were in Indiana, we always felt as though Elizabeth would walk through the front door at any moment.

"I wonder what she looks like. She probably has your dimples."

"I'll warrant she looks every inch like my Kathryn - golden bronze hair, Kathryn's inimitable smile, button nose - "

"Not!"

"Okay, then. She'll definitely have your eyes, sweetheart. Definitely."

"Long hair? Short hair?"

"Long hair, I should imagine. Ponytail. She's a teenager, right?"

Kathryn's eyes were bright in those moments that we bantered; then like a flash of lightning, so fast it was, Kathryn's eyes went dark. Dark…dark…descended into the same hell Nechayev and Gerek resided forever.

"She's lonely, Chakotay… I wonder who is feeding her…?"

"Kathryn, please…"

"Maybe even breastfeeding? Elizabeth will smile about now. Who's receiving her smiles? Her cries, her - "

"Kathryn…"

"And when she stumbles..."

Most times I had to shake Kathryn and when she focused again, seeing me at last through those unhappy eyes, she'd sigh. There were no tears, just a deep, dark chasm of pain as she threw herself against me. At times it was so bad that I thought she was ill, so feverish her body was. I was never far away from her then. Kathryn lay in my arms and long after she fell asleep, her body would still shudder in the aftermath of her memories.

Had Elizabeth decided on the Academy, she would have been in Kathryn's Quantum Physics class that Friday.

Fate had played us many tricks over the years. Dead ends, then tantalising clues, DNA scans, dead ends again, more teasing clues, more dead ends. Tricks. We grew tired.

I heard the front door open and rushed to meet Kathryn.

I stopped dead in my tracks.

Two visions. One was Kathryn Janeway, my wife. The other, a younger version of Kathryn.

Something snapped in me the instant Kathryn - my Kathryn - opened her mouth. Something awful, something of all the torment, the taunts, the anger, pain, torture, the total desolation and unimaginable level of our sorrow overpowered me. Were the fates playing yet another trick on us?

Were they?

The pale vision stood near the door, with the light from the lounge window throwing her in some hallowed silhouette. Was it Kathryn? Who was this? Did two Kathryns enter, one mine, the other...what might have been?

"Chakotay, this is Elizabeth...our Elizabeth..."

Kathryn's voice drifted to me, coming as it were, from a great distance, like a haunting melody.

_Chakotay, this is Elizabeth...our Elizabeth... _

We had joked in the early days of our pregnancy that Kathryn would announce the birth of her baby to me with those very words...

I was blind. Blind with rage, with memories that refused to die, that slept in my conscious mind, waiting for just such moments to play the devil's most awful joke on us. I thought of every birthday we should have celebrated, of cakes and candles that incremented year after year, of sprouting teeth and bright, open baby laughter. I thought of missing school presentations, of knowing that we would have had a loving, bright-as-a-button child. I thought of graduation, of tennis, of playing Velocity. I cursed the angels and demons and eagles in the sky and all known beautiful things God made. I thought of Kathryn lying in a pool of blood, her baby torn from her body, her body wasted by men. I thought how we had been punished enough that Kathryn had been violated with no regard for her condition. I thought how, even then, they wouldn't leave her alone, wouldn't leave me alone; how even then, they robbed us of our most precious gift of all.

I thought how we dreamed nights thinking up names for our baby. I was doing the thinking mostly, for Kathryn had already fixed upon her favourite fictional heroine. I thought how Kathryn screamed, how she died a thousand times...how I died.

I thought of all the times we went searching for our daughter, with Kathryn hardly over the trauma of what happened to her in those Cardassian cells.

Now there stood in front of me a young girl, about eighteen, looking the spitting image of Kathryn at the same age.

There was no doubt in my mind that it was Elizabeth.

But, she could have been a spectre, like the thousands of spectres of our daughter we've imagined would walk into our life just like that moment. I needed to touch her, to establish for myself that she was flesh and blood, that she was Elizabeth.

Years of caring for and protecting my wife, of absorbing her traumas as best as I could, of carrying her burden willingly, with devotion; years of suppressing my needs to offer her the solace she desperately craved, suddenly crumbled. They fell away like unstable walls long eroded by hatred and suppression of that hate. They fell about my feet and left me defenceless, powerless to remain strong.

I gripped Elizabeth's shoulders, felt the slenderness of youth in them. Then all hell broke loose. I screamed my daughter's name, over and over and over. All the years of waiting, of being told and taunted and derided that this child was dead, that my Kathryn made good meat for Cardassians... I howled and howled.

_O Lone Wolf _

_Cry your wolf song, _

_Howl to the raging moon and rage, rage! _

_Watch the clouds amble by _

_and darken the dark side _

_Howl...howl...howl... _

Someone shook me. Shook me hard. My tears splashed over her face.

"Chakotay...please...stop...stop..."

Blinded, and brought to a halt suddenly, I stared at the vision which came slowly into focus. My body shuddered violently.

"Kathryn...?"

"Chakotay...sit down...please..."

I realised with agony that Elizabeth was gone.

"What have I done?" I asked in a thin voice. "What have I done?"

Still shaking I hauled Kathryn to me and held on to her like a drowning man. I never realised that I was sitting on the couch, or how long I sat there like that, holding Kathryn. I just knew that I had seen a mirage and that the mirage had become real. So real that I could see the specks in the blue-grey eyes.

I was lucid only long enough to see her abject fear.

Kathryn stroked my hair, kissed my damp cheeks, crooned in soft murmuring tones.

"Don't worry, my love. Elizabeth is real... She found us, Chakotay...she found us!"

"She-she did?"

How could I experience such joyfulness in the midst of my distress?

Kathryn pulled me to my feet. That day she was stronger than I had ever seen her. That day she took my burden and helped carry it for me. I looked at her, my Kathryn, and I marveled again, as I always did when I looked at her, how privileged I was to have met her, how lucky I was to have her love me so much. Kathryn smiled, for the first time a sublime smile that didn't light her face, but created a glow that spread from deep inside her.

"Come, Chakotay. If Elizabeth is anything like me, you know where to find her..."

"Then we must go. We cannot lose her again, can we?" I told her, in my voice only the echoes of my earlier wailing.

And so we found Elizabeth sitting on the bench at Starfleet Academy, beautiful like her mother, and so, so lonely and afraid. She turned to me after I said her name. Her face was flushed and streaked with tears. And her eyes... Again I had that feeling of my guts being ripped out of my body. It was the way Kathryn, aged eighteen, looked at me that day I met her. I remembered how our first conversation started.

"And your name is...?"

"Chakotay..."

Her gaze had been so direct that day. How could I not fall in love with her?

So Elizabeth looked at me with the same direct gaze. On the way Kathryn had told me that we were to invite her to spend the weekend at Indiana. There we could tell her everything. Already I could see in Elizabeth's eyes that she thought the right thing: we didn't throw her away. Forces beyond our control did.

I looked at my wife and daughter in turn and thought absently that our life was just beginning.

If I could tell anyone who troubled me to ask what were the greatest moments of my life, I'd tell that person it was not the many exploits in the Delta Quadrant, or fighting and killing Gul Gerek, or beating the Borg, or being stranded with Kathryn on New Earth.

I'd tell that person it was the day I met Kathryn Janeway, and the day I found my daughter.

END


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